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THE  SIGNIFICANCE 

OF  THE 

WESTMINSTER  STANDARDS 


AS  A  CREED 


' 


’ 


THE  SIGNIFICANCE 

OF  THE 

WESTMINSTER  STANDARDS 

AS  A  CREED 


AN  ADDRESS 

Delivered  before  the  Presbytery  of  New  York,  November  S, 
1897,  on  the  occasion  of  the  celebration  of  the 
Two  Hundred  and  Fiftieth  Anniversary  of 
the  Completion  of  the  Westmin¬ 
ster  Standards 


BY 

BENJAMIN  B.  WARFIELD 


PROFESSOR  IN  THE  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY  AT  PRINCETON 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER’S  SONS 

1898 


Copyright,  1898,  by 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER’S  SONS 


TROW  DIRECTORY 

PRINTING  AND  BOOKBINDING  COMPANY 
NEW  YORK 


Zo 

THE  PRESBYTERY  OF  NEW  YORK 

AT  WHOSE  APPOINTMENT  IT  WAS  PREPARED  AND  BEFORE  WHOM  IT  WAS 
DELIVERED,  THIS  ADDRESS  IN  ITS  PRINTED  FORM  IS  NOW 

DEDICATED 

WITH  AN  EXPRESSION  OF  THE  AUTHOR’S  SENSE  OF  THE  HONOR  CONFERRED 
UPON  HIM  BY  THEIR  APPOINTMENT,  OF  HIS  HEARTY  PARTICIPATION  IN 
THEIR  LOVE  FOR  OUR  NOBLE  STANDARDS,  AND  OF  HIS  EARNEST 
DESIRE  THAT  THIS  ADDRESS,  WHICH  IS  BOTH  THEIRS 
AND  HIS,  MAY  BE  USED  OF  GOD  IN  MAKING  KNOWN 
IN  WIDER  CIRCLES  THE  TRUE  NATURE  OF 
OUR  STANDARDS  AND  IN  INTRENCHING 
THEM  MORE  DEEPLY  IN  OUR 
OWN  HEARTS 


3 

p 

3 


■ 


. 


THE  SIGNIFICANCE 


OF  THE 

WESTMINSTER  STANDARDS 
AS  A  CREED 


Fathers  and  Brethren  : — 

It  would  be  difficult  for  me  adequately  to  ex¬ 
press  the  pleasure  which  it  gives  me  to  respond 
to  your  invitation  to  join  with  you  to-day  in 
celebrating  the  fifth  jubilee  of  the  gift  of  the 
Westminster  Standards  to  the  world.  The  task 
you  have  laid  upon  me,  of  seeking  to  set  forth 
the  significance  of  that  gift,  though  it  has  its 
difficulties  arising  from  its  magnitude,  cannot 
fail  to  appeal  powerfully  to  one  who  has,  in  all 
sincerity  and  heartiness,  set  his  hand  to  these 
Standards  as  “  containing  the  system  of  doctrine 
taught  in  the  Holy  Scriptures.”  It  is  not 
merely  a  duty  but  a  pleasure  to  bear  witness  to 
the  truth  of  God  as  we  apprehend  it,  and  to 
give  a  reason  from  time  to  time  for  the  faith 
that  is  in  us.  I  cannot,  indeed,  hope  to  tell  over 
to-day  all  that  the  Westminster  Standards  are  to 
us — to  unfold  in  detail  all  that  has  for  two  cen- 


2 


The  Significance  of 

turies  and  a  half  made  them  precious  to  a  body 
of  Christians  who  have  been  second  to  none  in 
intelligence  of  conviction,  evangelistic  zeal  and 
faithfulness  of  confession.  But  if  I  were  to 
essay  to  express  in  one  word  what  it  is  in  them 
which  has  proved  so  perennial  a  source  of 
strength  to  generation  after  generation  of  Chris¬ 
tian  men,  and  which  causes  us  still  to  cling  to 
them  with  a  devotion  no  less  intelligent  than 
passionate,  I  think  I  should  but  voice  your  own 
conviction  were  I  to  say  that  it  is  because  these 
precious  documents  appeal  to  us  as  but  the  em¬ 
bodiment  in  fitly  chosen  language  of  the  pure 
gospel  of  the  grace  of  God.  The  high  value 
that  we  attach  to  them  and  that  leads  us  to 
gather  here  to-day  to  remember  with  gratitude 
before  God  the  men  who  gave  them  to  us,  and 
to  thank  God  for  this  supreme  product  of  their 
labors,  is  but  the  reflection  of  our  conviction  that 
in  these  forms  of  words  we  possess  the  most  com¬ 
plete,  the  most  fully  elaborated  and  carefully 
guarded,  the  most  perfect,  and  the  most  vital  ex¬ 
pression  that  has  ever  been  framed  by  the  hand  of 
man,  of  all  that  enters  into  what  we  call  evangel¬ 
ical  religion,  and  of  all  that  must  be  safeguarded 
if  evangelical  religion  is  to  persist  in  the  world. 

How  they  came  to  be  this,  it  is  to  be  my  task  this 
afternoon  to  attempt  to  recall  to  our  remembrance. 


the  Westminster  Standards 


I 

It  is  a  humbling  exercise  to  reflect  on  the  dif¬ 
ficulty  which  has  been  experienced  by  the  gospel 
of  God’s  grace  —  or  evangelical  religion,  as  we 
currently  call  it  nowadays — in  establishing  and 
preserving  itself  in  the  world.  The  proclama¬ 
tion  of  this  gospel  constitutes  the  main  burden 
of  the  Scriptural  revelation.  And,  after  the 
varied  and  insistent  statement  which  it  received 
at  the  hands  of  the  great  company  of  inspired 
men  whose  writings  make  up  the  complex  of  the 
Scriptures  —  and  especially  after  its  rich  pro¬ 
phetic  announcement  by  Isaiah ;  its  marvellous 
exposition  in  the  language  of  living  fact  in  the 
fourfold  narrative  of  the  life  of  Jesus ;  its 
full  dialectical  development  and  explanation  by 
Paul,  as  over  against  almost  every  possible  mis¬ 
conception  ;  its  poignant  assertion  by  John,  cut 
with  the  sharpness  and  polished  to  the  brilliancy 
of  a  gem — one  might  well  suppose  that  it  had 
been  made  the  permanent  possession  of  men, 
etched  into  the  very  substance  of  human  thought 
with  such  boldness  that  even  he  that  ran  could 
not  fail  to  read  it,  with  such  depth  that  it  could 
never  again  be  erased  or  obscured.  But  it  was 


4 


The  Significance  of 

not  so.  There  is  no  other  such  gulf  in  the  his¬ 
tory  of  human  thought  as  that  which  is  cleft  be¬ 
tween  the  apostolic  and  the  immediately  suc¬ 
ceeding  ages.  To  pass  from  the  latest  apostolic 
writings  to  the  earliest  compositions  of  unin¬ 
spired  Christian  pens,  is  to  fall  through  such  a 
giddy  height  that  it  is  no  wonder  if  we  rise 
dazed  and  almost  unable  to  determine  our  where¬ 
abouts.  Here  is  the  great  fault — as  the  geolo¬ 
gists  would  say — in  the  history  of  Christian  doc¬ 
trine.  There  is  every  evidence  of  continuity — 
but,  oh,  at  how  much  lower  a  level !  The  rich 
vein  of  evangelical  religion  has  run  well-nigh 
out ;  and,  though  there  are  masses  of  apostolic 
origin  lying  everywhere,  they  are  but  fragments, 
and  are  evidently  only  the  talus  which  has  fallen 
from  the  cliffs  above  and  scattered  itself  over  the 
lowered  surface.  Thus  it  came  about  that  the 
deposit  of  divine  truth  in  the  apostolic  revela¬ 
tion  did  not  supply  the  starting-point  of  the  de¬ 
velopment  of  doctrine  in  the  church,  but  has 
rather  from  the  beginning  stood  before  it  as  the 
goal  to  which  it  was  painfully  to  climb. 

Through  how  many  ages  men  needed  to  strug¬ 
gle  slowly  upward  before  they  even  measurably 
recovered  the  lost  elevation !  No  doubt  the  es¬ 
sence  of  evangelical  religion  remained  the  im¬ 
plicit  possession  of  every  truly  Christian  heart, 


the  W estminster  Standards  5 

and  this  implicit  presence  of  so  great  a  light  lent 
a  glow  to  every  Christian  age.  JSTo  doubt  the 
constituent  elements  of  evangelical  doctrine  found 
disjointedly  more  or  less  explicit  recognition  at 
the  hands  of  every  really  great  Christian  thinker, 
and  we  may  piece  these  fragments  together  into 
a  mosaic  picture  of  the  real  Christian  heart  of 
each  period.  INo  doubt  there  persisted  every¬ 
where  and  always  an  instinctive  protest,  fed  by 
the  Word  and  quickened  by  the  demands  of  the 
Christian  life,  against  the  deteriorated  concep¬ 
tions  of  the  day  ;  and  this  protest  flared  up  from 
time  to  time  into  a  flame  of  vehement  resistance 
to  some  more  than  usually  widespread,  or  some 
more  than  usually  aggressive,  or  some  more 
than  usually  deadly  assault  upon  some  essen¬ 
tial  element  of  that  truth  by  which  alone  men 
could  live,  and  would  not  be  allayed  until  the 
whole  truth  in  question  had  been  brought  to 
clear  consciousness  and  guarded  expression. 
Early  monuments  of  such  struggles  for  funda¬ 
mental  elements  of  evangelical  religion  we  pos¬ 
sess  in  those  forms  of  sound  words  which  we 
know  as  the  Nicene  Creed  and  the  Chalcedonian 
formulary,  in  which  the  evangelical  doctrines  of 
the  Trinity  in  Unity  and  of  the  Person  of  Christ 
receive  such  lucid,  comprehensive,  and  circum¬ 
spect  statement  as  has  safeguarded  them  through 


6 


The  Significa7ice  of 

all  subsequent  time,  and  against  every  hitherto 
conceivable  encroachment  of  misbelief.  But  it 
was  not  until  four  centuries  had  dragged  by 
that,  in  reaction  upon  an  incredibly  audacious  on¬ 
slaught  upon  the  very  core  of  evangelical  relig¬ 
ion,  the  Church  was  enabled  to  rise  upon  the 
broad  and  strong  wings  of  a  great  religious 
genius,  to  something  like  a  full-orbed  apprehen¬ 
sion  of  the  treasures  she  possessed  in  the  gospel 
of  God’s  grace. 

Augustine  compassed  for  her  the  privilege 
of  this  splendid  vision,  and  for  a  season  she 
basked  in  its  glory.  But  what  that  generation 
thus  achieved,  it  lacked  the  power  fully  to  se¬ 
cure  for  its  successors.  It  fixed  its  own  attain¬ 
ments  in  no  firmly  outlined  and  detailed  formu¬ 
lary  of  ecumenical  authority  ;  and  it  had  not 
itself  passed  away  before  the  lines  drawn  so 
sharply  and  boldly  by  the  master-hand  of  Au¬ 
gustine  began  to  fade  again  out  of  the  conscious¬ 
ness  of  men.  We  can  trace  the  increasing  ob¬ 
scuration  from  age  to  age.  Not  more  than  a  cen¬ 
tury  had  elapsed  before  the  tenacity  and  distinct¬ 
ness  with  which  the  gospel  in  its  entirety  was 
grasped  had  so  far  relaxed,  that  it  was  possible 
even  for  the  best  Christians  of  the  time,  men  like 
the  great  and  good  Cresarius,  to  betray  it  into 
one  of  those  futile  and  fatal  compromises  with 


the  Westminster  Standards  7 

its  persistent  enemy  which  have  proved  in  all  ages 
the  snare  of  good  men  and  the  ruin  of  the  truth. 
No  wonder  that  three  centuries  later  it  lay  lan¬ 
guishing  and  dying  in  chains  in  the  person  of 
one  who  nobly  bore  the  fit  name  of  the  “  Ser¬ 
vant  of  God,”  *  and  to  whose  honor,  as  to  a  light 
shining  in  a  dark  place,  we  should  do  well  to 
pause  to  pay  some  grateful  tribute  to-day.  Then 
the  pall  of  ecclesiasticism  was  dragged  over  the 
corpse,  and  the  dense  primeval  night  seemed  to 
have  settled  again  upon  the  face  of  the  earth. 

But  it  is  a  long  night  that  knows  no  dawn  ;  and 
just  when  the  darkness  seemed  most  hopeless,  a 
streak  of  light  appears  again  on  the  horizon  and 
the  sun  springs  suddenly  up  and  climbs  the  heav¬ 
ens.  The  Reformation  we  call  it :  Zwingli,  Luther, 
Calvin — these  are  its  heralds:  and  what  it  really  is 
is  the  gospel  of  God’s  grace  brought  back  to  earth. 
Ah !  how  men  greet  it !  Crushed  under  the 
weight  of  their  sin,  with  nothing  but  their  poor, 
human  strength  to  lift  it,  and  nought  reached  to 
their  help  but  the  hand  of  a  church  much  too  ob¬ 
viously  human,  how  joyously  they  welcome  again 
the  outstretched  hand  of  God  !  And  how  the 
glad  news  spreads  until  all  Europe  is  filled  with 
its  echo,  and  men  everywhere  rise  from  the  ashes 
of  their  despondency,  stretch  themselves  awake, 
*  Fulgentius  Goteschalcus  —  “illustrious  servant  of  God.” 


8 


The  Significance  of 

put  on  new  courage,  and  go  forward  in  the  hope 
of  God.  Surely  now,  we  will  say,  flung  into  the 
midst  of  this  mass  of  awakened  men,  with  the 
memory  of  their  despair  fresh  on  them  and  the 
experience  of  their  deliverance  keen  in  their 
hearts,  the  gospel  has  come  to  stay.  But  no:  the 
clouds  at  once  gather  again.  Melancthon  him¬ 
self,  trusted  helper  and  worthy  companion  of  Lu¬ 
ther,  first  systematic  expounder  of  the  newly  re¬ 
covered  gospel,  Melancthon  himself  readmits  the 
old  “  evil  leaven  of  synergism,”  and,  amid  the  tur¬ 
moils  that  ensue,  the  Lutheran  churches  succeed 
in  only  partially  recovering  the  lost  ground. 
They  are  able,  accordingly,  to  establish  them¬ 
selves,  not  on  the  pure  gospel  of  the  grace  of 
God,  but  as  their  Formula  Concordias  witnesses, 
only  on  a  somewhat  neutral  territory  over  which 
the  old  humanitarianism  could  urge  some  sort  of 
claim.  Thus  these  churches  lost  the  hope  of  giv¬ 
ing  its  final  and  complete  formulation  to  the  prin¬ 
ciples  of  evangelical  religion. 

Meanwhile,  in  the  grace  of  God,  better  things 
were  being  wrought  by  the  Reformed.  They  it 
was  who  were  most  cruelly  ground  under  the  heel 
of  the  oppressor  ;  they  it  was,  consequently,  who 
most  passionately  cast  their  hearts'  hope  upon  the 
God  of  salvation.  And  so,  all  over  the  Reformed 
world,  voices  were  raised  giving  expression  to  the 


the  Westminster  Standards 


9 


doctrines  of  grace  with  a  fulness,  a  richness,  an 
absoluteness  never  before  known.  Reformed 
Confessions  sprang  up  everywhere  in  a  luxuriant 
growth,  written  often  by  the  hands  of  martyrs, 
wet  always  with  their  blood,  and  each  and  all  de¬ 
claring  through  martyr  lips,  which  spoke  not  only 
in  the  fear  of  God  but  out  of  ardent  love  to  Him, 
and  face  to  face  as  dying  men  with  their  Judge 
and  their  Redeemer,  all  the  words  of  this  life. 
It  is  a  century  of  struggle  and  suffering  which 
is  distilled  into  these  Confessions — a  century  of 
patient  endurance  and  faithful  testimony  which, 
in  their  glowing  and  uncompromising  language, 
speaks  out,  with  a  firmness  and  clearness  and  ful¬ 
ness  never  before  attained,  the  principles  of 
that  gospel  by  which  alone  the  soul  can  live,  and 
the  full  sweetness  and  strength  of  which  men 
taste  only  in  times  like  those.  At  last  the  gos¬ 
pel  had  come  to  its  rights  ;  at  last  men  seemed  to 
have  laid  hold  upon  it  with  a  clearness  of  appre¬ 
hension  and  an  ardor  of  embrace  which  could 
never  more  be  loosed. 

But  the  treasure  was  not  even  yet  to  be  re¬ 
tained  without  a  final  and  supreme  struggle.  One 
evil  had  hitherto  been  spared  the  Reformed 
Churches.  Every  conceivable  assault  had  been 
made  upon  them  from  without,  but  no  serious  in¬ 
ternal  treason  had  as  yet  endangered  the  purity 


io  The  Significance  of 

of  their  confession.  With  the  second  century  of 
their  existence  even  this  trial  was  to  fall  upon 
them.  It  came  in  what  we  know  as  the  Remon¬ 
strant  Controversy,  in  which  the  old  humanita¬ 
rian  conceptions,  the  violent  assertion  of  which 
had  been  the  occasion  of  Augustine’s  republica¬ 
tion  of  the  gospel  of  grace,  and  by  the  more 
measured  and  subtle  working  of  which  evangeli¬ 
cal  religion  had  been  gradually  throttled  in  the 
Latin  Church,  reappeared  in  the  very  bosom  of 
the  Reformed  Churches  themselves  and  jeopard¬ 
ized  the  purity  of  their  assertion  of  the  gospel. 
We  all  know  how  the  new  danger  was  tran¬ 
scended.  Met  in  ecumenical  synod  at  Dort,  the 
Reformed  Churches  gave  renewed  and  serious 
consideration,  in  the  light  of  Scripture  alone,  to 
those  elements  of  evangelical  religion  to  which 
exception  had  been  taken,  and  with  one  tongue, 
voicing  the  testimony  of  the  whole  Reformed 
world,  bore  their  solemn  witness  to  them  as  es¬ 
sential  elements  in  the  gospel  of  God’s  grace. 
But  the  end  was  not  even  yet.  Transferred  to 
English  ground  the  assault  was  continued  for  a 
third  of  a  century  longer  under  circumstances 
which  gave  it  the  highest  conceivable  force  and 
speciousness.  Here  sacerdotalism,  in  the  form  of 
Anglican  prelacy,  presented  itself  in  the  disguise 
of  the  Reformed  religion  itself.  Here  humani- 


the  Westminster  Standards  u 


tarianism  put  on  the  garments  of  light,  allied  it¬ 
self  with  religious  fervor,  and  ran  up  by  insensi¬ 
ble  stages  into  a  mysticism  which  confounded 
human  claims  with  the  very  voice  of  God.  This 
is  the  meaning  of  what  we  call  the  Puritan  Con¬ 
flict  which,  from  the  theological  side,  was  nothing 
else  than  the  last  deadly  struggle  of  evangelical 
religion — the  gospel  of  God’s  grace — to  preserve 
itself  pure  and  sweet  and  clean  in  the  midst  of 
the  most  insidious  attacks  which  could  be  brought 
against  it — attacks,  the  strength  of  which  resided 
just  in  the  fact  that  now  its  old-time  foes  ap¬ 
proached  it  with  the  sword  in  hand,  indeed,  and 
with  no  loss  of  their  undying  hatred,  but  un¬ 
der  its  own  banner  and  clothed  in  its  own  uni¬ 
form. 

It  was  a  battle  to  the  death ;  and  the  arts  of 
war  could  not  but  be  learned  in  its  progress.  To 
meet  so  protean  a  foe,  attacking  at  every  point 
with  weapons  of  unexampled  fineness  and  tactics 
of  unimagined  subtlety,  a  skill  of  fence  and  a 
wariness  of  defence  unknown  before  were  nec¬ 
essarily  developed  ;  and,  with  them,  those  high 
qualities  which  underlie  them — keenness  of  per¬ 
ception,  clearness  of  vision,  firmness  of  purpose, 
accuracy  of  aim,  precision  of  movement  straight 
to  the  essential  goal.  Men  trained  in  this  school 
could  not  be  content  with  merely  general  state- 


12 


The  Significance  of 

ments  of  the  truth  by  which  they  lived,  and  which 
would  long  since  have  been  wrested  from  them 
had  they  held  to  it  with  only  a  broad  and,  there¬ 
fore,  loose  grasp.  In  the  strenuousness  of  the 
conflict  they  had  not  only  learned  how  to  state  the 
gospel  sharply,  distinctly,  precisely ;  they  had, 
so  to  speak,  lost  the  power  of  stating  it  otherwise 
than  with  clearness  and  exactitude  and  force.  As 
well  expect  the  veteran  fresh  from  the  wars  to 
bungle  in  his  fence ;  nay,  his  blade  takes  instinc¬ 
tively  the  correct  attitude  of  guard,  and  eye  and 
wrist  move  in  such  organic  harmony  that  it  would 
be  only  with  an  effort  that  either  could  prove 
false  to  its  fellow.  As  well  expect  the  mountain¬ 
eer  who  has  trodden  the  peaks  from  infancy  to 
stumble  heavily  over  his  arretes  and  passes ;  he 
knows  not  how  to  do  otherwise  than  to  step 
cleanly  and  surely  and  firmly,  and  he  instinctively 
plants  his  feet  where  they  cannot  be  moved.  So, 
when  this  company  of  Puritan  pastors  was  gath¬ 
ered  from  the  parishes  of  England  which  they 
had  saved  for  the  gospel,  and  was  bidden, 
“Write  down  this  gospel,”  they  could  not  do 
otherwise  than  write  it  down  with  that  rich  com¬ 
pleteness  which  had  nourished  their  own  souls 
and  the  souls  of  their  flocks  in  those  times  of 
conflict  and  often  almost  of  despair,  and  with 
that  precision  in  which  alone  it  could  preserve  its 


the  Westminster  Standards  13 

integrity  and  power  in  the  face  of  the  violent 
and  insidious  foes  to  the  attacks  of  which  it  had 
been,  in  their  own  experience,  exposed. 

It  is  because  the  Westminster  Standards  are  the 
product  of  such  men,  working  under  such  circum¬ 
stances,  that  they  embody  the  gospel  of  the  grace 
of  God  with  a  carefulness,  a  purity,  and  an  ex¬ 
actness  never  elsewhere  achieved,  and  come  to  us 
as,  historically,  the  final  fixing  in  confessional 
language  of  the  principles  and  teachings  of 
evangelical  religion.  Sixteen  centuries  of  strug¬ 
gle  toward  the  pure  apprehension  of  the  gospel 
lay  behind  them,  culminating  in  that  ultimate 
proclamation  of  evangelical  truth  which  we  call 
the  Reformation.  More  specifically,  a  hundred 
and  fifty  years  of  the  development  of  Reformed 
theology  lay  behind  them,  culminating  in  the 
vindication  of  the  purity  of  the  gospel  by  the 
Reformed  world  as  over  against  the  Remonstrant 
adulterations.  Most  specifically  of  all,  there  lay 
behind  them  the  half  century  of  the  Puritan  con¬ 
flict — a  half  century  of  working  and  polishing  the 
jewel  of  the  gospel  beneath  every  hammer  that 
the  cruelty  of  men,  and  every  chisel  and  file  that 
the  ingenuity  of  men  could  devise,  until  it  was 
beaten  and  cut  into  the  most  compact  and  sharply 
outlined  possible  expression  of  the  pure  gospel 
of  the  grace  of  God.  It  is  to  these  historical 


14  The  Significance  of 

conditions  of  their  origin  that  the  Westminster 
Standards  owe  their  high  significance  and  value. 
Historically  speaking,  this  is  the  significance  of 
the  Westminster  Standards  as  a  creed. 


the  Westminster  Standards 


15 


II 

But  when  we  thus  say  that  the  historical  origin 
of  the  Westminster  Standards  operated  directly 
to  give  them  peculiar  completeness  and  precision 
as  a  statement  of  the  gospel,  that  is  as  much  as 
to  say  that  they  appeal  to  us  not  more  because 
they  are  historically  the  ultimate  crystallization 
of  the  principles  of  evangelical  religion,  than  be¬ 
cause  of  the  high  scientific  perfection  which  they 
attain,  considered  as  a  product  of  human  thought, 
in  their  statement  of  these  principles.  The  scien¬ 
tific  quality  of  the  Chalcedonian  formulary,  for 
example,  was  not  due  to  any  speculative  interest 
dominating  the  minds  of  its  framers,  nor  to  any 
singular  speculative  ability  characterizing  them, 
but  to  the  thoroughness  with  which  the  whole 
problem  with  which  the  document  deals  was 
threshed  out  in  the  course  of  the  keen  and  pro¬ 
longed  controversies  which  preceded  its  formula¬ 
tion  and  prepared  the  material  for  its  use.  This 
effect  is  not  best  expressed  by  representing  the 
vital  processes  which  go  on  in  a  long  discussion, 
affecting  the  basis  of  the  religious  life,  as  simulat¬ 
ing  in  their  results  a  scientific  product ;  it  would 
be  more  nearly  correct  to  conceive  the  processes 


1 6  The  Significance  of 

of  scientific  statement  as  imitating,  and  that  at  a 
considerable  interval,  the  work  of  organic  contro¬ 
versy.  The  scientific  investigator  makes  all  due 
effort  carefully  to  consider  every  possible  solution 
of  the  problem  brought  before  him,  candidly  to 
weigh  every  conceivable  element  which  may  af¬ 
fect  the  result,  and  thoroughly  to  canvass  every 
combination  of  the  elements  possible  to  imagine ; 
and  he  hopes,  by  strenuous  diligence,  watchful 
impartiality  and  thorough  manipulation  of  his 
material,  to  reach  a  result  which  will  do  full  justice 
to  all  considerations,  and  which  will  therefore 
stand  permanently  in  the  face  of  all  criticism. 
But  it  would  seem  to  be  obvious  that  such  a  sift¬ 
ing  and  weighing  cannot  go  on  in  a  single  coolly 
working  mind  with  anything  like  the  same  search¬ 
ing  completeness,  or  ultimate  in  anything  like  the 
same  perfection  of  result,  as  when  they  take  place 
in  the  caldron  of  an  aroused  and  deeply  moved 
mass  of  men  striving  earnestly  to  comprehend  and 
express  the  elements  of  their  faith.  Scientific  con¬ 
struction,  therefore,  bears  to  vital  processes  in 
this  sphere,  too,  very  much  the  same  relation  as 
in  chemical  synthesis :  not  until  the  manipulation 
of  the  laboratory  can  outdo  the  subtle  alchemy  of 
life  can  we  expect  scientific  care  to  surpass  liv¬ 
ing  controversy  in  producing  a  truly  scientific 
statement  of  vital  truth.  Whenever  the  elements 


the  Westminster  Standards  17 

cast  into  the  crucible  of  life  include  all  those  that 
enter  into  the  case,  and  the  ferment  is  violent 
enough  and  sufficiently  long  continued,  we  may  ex¬ 
pect  the  ultimate  eliminations  and  combinations 
to  be  in  the  highest  sense  natural — that  is  to  run 
on  the  lines  of  essential  rightness — and  the  final 
crystallization  to  be  a  scientific  product  of  the 
first  quality.  It  is  to  the  fact  that  just  this  was 
the  process  by  which  the  Westminster  Standards 
came  into  being  that  they  owe  their  high  scien¬ 
tific  character. 

For,  consider  how  richly  represented  in  the  re¬ 
ligious  life  of  Europe  during  the  formative 
period  of  the  Reformed  theology,  and  especially 
in  the  religious  life  of  Britain  during  the  era 
when  the  Westminster  theology  was  in  prepara¬ 
tion,  were  all  those  constructions  which  can  with 
any  show  of  attractiveness  be  given  to  the  Chris¬ 
tian  religion.  I  think  it  may  be  said  that  there 
are  only  three  main  forms  in  which  this  religion 
may  be  plausibly  presented  to  the  acceptance  of 
men  ;  which  can  acquire — certainly  which  have 
ever  acquired — a  completeness,  a  self-consistency, 
a  power  of  presentation,  such  as  tend  to  give  them 
any  extended  empire  over  men’s  minds.  We 
may,  for  our  convenience,  label  these  the  Sacer¬ 
dotal,  the  Humanitarian,  and  the  Evangelical 
Gospels;  and  it  is  among  them  that  the  battle  of 


1 8  The  Significance  of 

the  faith  must  needs  be  fought  out.  Possibly 
there  never  will  be  a  time  when  all  three  will 
not,  in  one  form  or  another,  be  represented  in 
the  world  ;  certainly  up  to  to-day,  and  apparently 
as  far  into  the  future  as  our  conjecture  can  pene¬ 
trate,  the  supreme  task  of  each  has  been  and  will 
continue  to  be  to  make  good  its  position  as  over 
against  the  other  two,  and  to  protect  its  territory 
from  absorption  by  them.  Every  attack  that  has 
ever  been  made,  or  apparently  can  ever  be  made, 
upon  evangelical  religion — be  it  as  violent  or  as 
insidious  as  it  may — will,  on  analysis,  be'  found 
to  be  a  more  or  less  gross,  or  a  more  or  less  sub¬ 
tle,  manifestation  of  one  or  the  other  of  these 
opposing  tendencies.  No  statement  of  evangel¬ 
ical  religion  can  stand,  therefore,  which  does  not 
differentiate  it,  and  in  differentiating  protect  it, 
from  these  its  two  perennial  and  ever-encroach¬ 
ing  foes.  And  the  statement  that  does  perfectly 
differentiate  it  from  them  both  will  be  the  high¬ 
est  and  most  perfect  scientific  statement  of  which 
evangelical  religion  is  capable. 

It  was  thus  incident  to  the  historical  circum¬ 
stances  of  their  origin  that  the  Westminster 
Standards  should  attain  the  high-water  mark  of 
a  differentiated  statement  of  the  elements  of 
evangelical  religion.  For  the  most  complete  and 
the  most  powerful  embodiment  of  the  sacerdotal 


the  Westminster  Standards  19 

tendency  is  found,  of  course,  in  the  church  of 
Rome ;  and  never  was  this  tendency  so  active  in 
its  propaganda,  so  impassioned,  so  filled  with  the 
courage  of  intense  conviction  and  utter  devotion 
as  in  those  days  of  the  Counter -Reformation, 
when  the  Jesuit  hosts  flung  themselves  into  the 
work  of  recovering  every  inch  of  the  ground  lost 
in  the  Protestant  revolt  with  a  fiery  zeal  and  a 
fertility  of  resource  which  remain  until  to-day  the 
wonder  and  example  of  the  world.  And  while 
the  most  complete  embodiment  of  the  humani¬ 
tarian  tendency  is  to  be  sought  in  more  extreme 
developments,  such  as  for  example  Socinianism  or 
rationalizing  naturalism,  to  the  workings  of  which 
the  Reformed  Churches  were  no  strangers;  its 
most  effective  elaboration  within  the  limits  of 
a  church  claiming  to  believe  in  God  and  His 
Christ,  has  ever  exhibited  itself  in  that  great 
middle  system  which  under  the  name  of  Semi- 
Pelagianism  early  allied  itself  with  Roman  ec- 
clesiasticism  and  in  later  Romanism  became  the 
characterizing  feature  of  the  Jesuit  theology,  and 
which  broke  out  afresh  in  the  churches  of  the  Re¬ 
formation  in  the  forms  of  Lutheran  synergism 
and  Remonstrant  humanism  and  sought  to  poi¬ 
son  the  fountains  of  evangelical  religion  in  their 
sources.  The  simple  enumeration  of  these  facts 
will  serve  to  indicate  the  fires  in  which  the  Re- 


20 


The  Significance  of 

formed  theology  was  forged.  It  would  have 
been  a  marvel  had  it  emerged  from  its  century 
of  conflict  with  these  forces  without  having 
been  beaten  into  something  like  shape.  There 
was  indeed  but  a  single  alternative  open :  that  it 
should  be  crushed  out  of  existence  and  pounded 
into  the  dust  that  is  spurned  by  the  foot  of  man, 
or  else  that  it  should  come  forth  from  the  forg¬ 
ing  compacted  into  adamant  and  polished  into 
perfection. 

And  yet  the  process  of  the  forging  of  that  ex¬ 
quisite  product  of  scientific  theology  which  we 
call  the  Westminster  Standards  is  but  half  revealed 
when  we  recite  these  broad  facts.  It  was  under 
those  hammers  that  the  Reformed  theology  was 
beaten  into  that  perfected  shape  in  which  it  lay 
in  the  minds  of  its  adherents  throughout  Europe 
in  the  seventeenth  century.  Thus  it  was  fashioned 
into  the  noble  shape  in  which  it  was  spoken  out 
by  the  assembled  Reformed  world  at  the  Synod 
of  Dort  or  by  the  Swiss  theologians  in  their  For¬ 
mula  Consensus :  and  thus  it  would  have  been 
spoken  out  in  every  centre  of  Reformed  life  in  all 
Europe,  from  Scotland  to  Hungary.  It  was  already 
in  a  high  and  true  sense  a  finished  product.  But 
in  a  higher  and  finer  sense  there  was  a  finish  yet 
to  be  given  it :  a  finish  which  could  be  acquired 
only  by  passage  through  the  yet  more  severe 


the  Westminster  Standards 


2 1 


ordeal  that  awaited  it  on  English  ground.  There 
can  be  no  need  to  recite  again  the  details  of  the 
story  of  how  narrow  the  lines  were  there  drawn 
within  which  he  must  walk  who  would  preserve 
his  good  confession  :  of  how  sacerdotalism  seized 
the  reins  of  the  Reformed  Church  of  England 
itself  and  drove  rough-shod  over  the  hearts  and 
consciences  of  her  only  faithful  children  ;  of  how, 
in  the  dreadful  confusion  of  the  times,  humani¬ 
tarian  self-assertiveness  obtained  control  of  some 
of  the  finest  spiritual  sinew  in  the  land  and  set  it 
to  demolishing  the  foundations  of  the  gospel. 
No  wonder  that  many  of  the  very  elect  were  de¬ 
ceived  and  lost  the  purity  of  their  testimony. 
But  no  wonder,  on  the  other  hand,  that  those 
who  endured,  because — how  else  ? — they  saw  the 
Invisible  One  and  in  the  light  of  that  Vision 
were  enabled  to  keep  the  word  of  God’s  patience, 
emerged  from  the  ordeal  as  from  a  furnace  seven 
times  heated,  purified  and  refined  and  shaking 
the  very  smell  of  the  smoke  from  their  undefiled 
garments.  These  were  they,  who,  sitting  in  solemn 
conclave  in  the  Jerusalem  Chamber,  gave  forth 
that  serious  expression  of  the  faith  by  which  they 
lived  which  we  call  the  Westminster  Standards: 
and  this  is  the  reason  why  this  their  enunciation 
of  the  elements  of  the  gospel  of  God’s  grace  has 
a  perfection  of  finish  upon  it  elsewhere  unattained, 


22 


The  Significance  of 

— which  could  not  have  been  equalled  bj  the 
work  of  any  other  body  of  men  then  on  the  face 
of  the  earth,  which  we  can  never  hope  to  surpass, 
and  which  we  can  lightly  lose  or  rashly  cast  from 
us  only  when  our  grasp  upon  evangelical  religion 
becomes  weak  or  our  love  for  it  grows  cold. 

It  belongs  to  the  very  essence  of  the  situation 
that  an  enunciation  of  the  elements  of  the  gospel, 
springing  out  of  such  conditions,  should  be  su¬ 
premely  well  guarded  from  the  sides  of  both  its 
most  obdurate  foes, — between  which  it  was  at  the 
time,  only  by  the  greatest  circumspection,  pre¬ 
serving  itself  from  being  crushed,  as  between  the 
upper  and  nether  millstones.  'No  wonder,  then, 
that  even  the  most  cursory  reader  of  the  West¬ 
minster  Standards  is  impressed  with  the  exquisite 
precision  and  balance  of  their  statements,  with  the 
clearness  and  purity  with  which  they  bring  out 
just  the  essence  of  the  gospel,  and  the  drastic 
thoroughness  with  which  they  separate  from  it 
every  remainder  of  sacerdotal  and  humanitarian 
leaven.  To  read  over  a  chapter  or  two  of  the 
Westminster  Confession  gives  one  fresh  from  the 
obscurities  and  confusions  of  much  modern  theo¬ 
logical  discussion  a  mental  feeling  very  nearly 
akin  to  the  physical  sensation  of  washing  one’s 
hands  and  face  after  a  hot  hour’s  work.  Here 
the  truth  is  shelled  out  clean.  No  doubt  there 


the  Westminster  Standards  23 

are  those  whose  perverted  appetites  seem  to  like 
more  or  less  chaff  in  their  bread,  and  who  may 
therefore  manage  to  take  offence  at  this  very  per¬ 
fection  of  statement.  And  it  may  be  easy  to  find 
fault  with  what  we  may  be  pleased  to  call  the 
polemic  flavor  of  documents  so  formulated,  and 
to  ask  whether  it  is  not  time  to  smooth  out  the 
frowns  of  war  from  our  countenance  and  to  speak 
out  our  testimony  to  the  gospel  of  love  with  the 
unbroken  serenity  of  a  universal  peace.  As  if 
truth  could  ever  be  stated  without  offence  to  false¬ 
hood  :  as  if  the  very  essence  of  definition  lay  not 
in  exclusion:  as  if  it  were  not  self-evident  that 
perfect  and  clean  inclusion  must  always  work 
equally  perfect  and  clean  exclusion,  and  the  more 
complete  and  perfect  the  exclusion  the  more  com¬ 
plete  and  perfect  the  definition.  The  wall  that 
protects  the  citadel  must  needs  be  too  narrow  in 
its  compass  to  enclose  the  foeman’s  camp  as  well : 
the  flask  that  preserves  the  precious  essence  must 
needs  be  tight  enough  to  shut  out  corrupting 
germs.  The  Westminster  fathers  placed  nothing 
in  their  Standards  which  they  did  not  think  worth 
fighting  for, — nay,  which  they  had  not  already 
been  called  upon  to  fight  for ;  and  it  marks  the 
height  of  their  service  that  they  have  given  it  a 
form  securely  guarded  on  every  side,  on  the  well- 
polished  surface  of  which,  in  particular,  the  chief- 


24 


The  Significance  of 

est  and  most  persistent  foes  of  the  gospel  will  seek 
in  vain  for  a  foothold. 

So  long,  then,  as  the  leavens  of  sacerdotalism 
and  humanitarianism — of  externality  in  religion 
and  of  dependence  on  flesh — remain,  in  one  form 
or  another,  the  most  dangerous  perils  to  which  the 
gospel  is  exposed  (and  it  would  seem  as  if  this 
must  be  as  long  as  human  nature  endures),  so 
long  the  statement  given  the  gospel  of  grace  in 
the  Westminster  Standards  must  remain  the  ulti¬ 
mate  scientific  enunciation  of  the  principles  of 
evangelical  religion.  In  the  same  sense  in  which 
the  Hicene  and  Athanasian  creeds  attained  the 
final  expression  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity, 
and  the  Chalcedonian  definition  the  final  expres¬ 
sion  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Person  of  Christ,  the 
Westminster  Standards  attained  the  final  expres¬ 
sion  of  the  elements  of  evangelical  religion.  Of 
course,  nothing  like  divine  inspiration  is  attrib¬ 
uted  to  any  of  these  documents ;  nor  is  it  neces¬ 
sary  to  invoke  any  special  or  peculiar  divine 
superintendence  over  their  production,  though  he 
who  believes  in  a  God  will  not  fail  to  perceive 
Ilis  providential  working,  nor  will  he  who  be¬ 
lieves  in  the  God  of  the  Bible  fail  to  perceive  the 
fulfilment  of  His  promises,  in  such  supreme  pro¬ 
ducts  of  human  thought  on  divine  things  as  these. 
What  we  discover  on  the  surface  of  these  docu- 


the  Westminster  Standards  25 

ments,  however,  is  the  product  of  historical  pro¬ 
cesses  and  of  historical  conditions  which  not  only 
enabled  but  compelled  their  framers  firmly  to 
grasp  in  all  their  relations  and  clearly,  cleanly,  and 
guardedly  to  express  the  truths  with  which  they 
deal.  They  mark,  in  a  word,  epochs  in  the  his¬ 
tory  of  human  reflection  on  the  truths  of  the 
gospel — epochs  in  the  attainment  and  registry  of 
special  truths  ;  and  they,  therefore,  in  the  nature 
of  the  case,  give  these  special  truths  their  com¬ 
plete  and  final  scientific  expression.  All  subse¬ 
quent  attempts  to  restate  them  can  but  repeat 
these  older  statements — which  were  struck  out 
when  the  fires  were  hot  and  the  iron  was  soft — or 
else  fall  helplessly  away  from  the  purity  of  their 
conceptions  or  the  justness  of  their  language. 
In  this  fact  resides,  scientifically  speaking,  the 
significance  of  the  Westminster  Standards  as  a 
creed. 


26 


The  Significance  of 


III 

It  is  sufficiently  clear  that  a  scientific  statement 
of  truth,  originating  in  the  manner  described  and 
owing  its  scientific  character  not  merely  to  closet 
reflection  but  to  the  interaction  of  the  varied  in¬ 
terests  and  requirements  of  men’s  souls,  need  not 
— nay,  cannot — lack  in  vital  quality.  It  will  nec¬ 
essarily  bear  in  its  very  fibre  a  coloring  from  the 
heart.  A  product  of  the  intensest  intellectual  ac¬ 
tivity,  and  exhibiting  in  its  forms  of  statement 
the  niceties  of  scientific  construction,  it  is  never¬ 
theless  the  product  of  intellect  working  only  un¬ 
der  impulse  from  and  dictation  of  the  heart,  and 
in  its  very  forms  of  statement  will  be  the  vehicle 
of  the  expression  of  the  needs  and  attainments 
of  the  spiritual  life.  And  thus  it  comes  about 
that  the  Westminster  Standards  appeal  to  us  not 
merely  as,  historically,  the  deposited  faith  of  the 
best  age  of  evangelical  development,  and  not 
merely  as,  scientifically,  the  most  thoroughly 
thought  out  and  most  carefully  guarded  state¬ 
ment  ever  penned  of  the  elements  of  evangelical 
religion,  but  also  as,  vitally,  filled  with  the  ex¬ 
pressed  essence  and  breathing  the  finest  fragrance 
of  spiritual  religion. 


the  Westminster  Standards  27 

They  gravely  err  who  picture  to  themselves  the 
fathers  to  whom  we  owe  the  formulation  of  any 
of  the  great  doctrines  of  our  religion  as  domi¬ 
nated  by  merely  speculative  interests,  or  nerved 
for  their  task  mainly  by  metaphysical  considera¬ 
tions.  It  has  never  been  so.  Restless  specula¬ 
tion  and  philosophical  pretension  have  ever  been 
rather  the  boasts  and,  let  us  frankly  admit  it,  the 
characteristic  possessions  of  the  purveyors  of 
heresies  and  the  fomenters  of  those  fatal  concilia¬ 
tions  with  the  thought  of  the  world  which  have, 
from  the  beginning,  been  the  bane  of  the  Church 
and  one  of  the  most  serious  perils  of  the  gospel. 
It  is  not  only  in  the  infancy  of  Christianity  that 
it  has  been  a  true  testimony  that  “Rot  many 
wise  are  called.”  A  certain  speculative  inertness, 
we  might  almost  sa}r,  has  marked  the  Church, 
and  even  those  to  whom  God,  in  His  providence, 
has  committed  the  formulation  of  its  treasures 
of  truth,  until,  goaded  into  action  by  intolerable 
assaults  on  the  very  penetralium  of  their  spiritual 
life,  their  minds  have  taken  fire  from  their  hearts 
and  risen  to  compass  and  proclaim  the  elements 
of  the  higher  wisdom  of  God.  The  accents  which 
smite  our  ears,  out  of  our  creeds,  with  such  tre¬ 
mendous  emphasis  do  not  indicate  the  crisp,  cold, 
sharp  movements  of  mere  intellection  ;  they  are 
the  pulsations  of  great  hearts  heaving  in  emotion 


28  The  Significance  of 

and  rising  to  the  assertion  of  the  precious  truth 
by  which  they  live.  If  we  read  them  as  merely 
speculative  discriminations,  the  fault  lies  in  us, 
not  in  them.  It  is  because  our  hearts  cannot,  like 
theirs,  stand  up  and  answer,  “  We  have  felt !  ”  * 
The  scoffer  who  mocks,  for  example,  at  the  Ni- 
cene  fathers  wrangling  over  a  mere  iota  in  fram¬ 
ing  their  definition  of  the  Trinitarian  relation, f 
but  uncovers  the  poverty  of  his  own  spiritual  life 
and  betrays  the  shallowness  of  his  own  religions 
experience.  He  that  knows  his  Lord,  that  has 
in  his  periods  of  despair  fled  to  His  sheltering 
arms  and  in  his  periods  of  comfort  rested  upon 
His  bosom,  I  do  not  say  will  not,  I  say  cannot, 
abate  one  jot  or  one  tittle  of  his  passionate  asser¬ 
tion  of  His  divine  majesty.  We  treat  these  clean¬ 
ly  cut  and  nicely  balanced  phrases  as  if  they  were 
intellectualistic  scales  weighing  minute  differences 
of  merely  speculative  import,  only  because,  and 

*  “  A  warmtli  within  the  breast  would  melt 
The  freezing  reason’s  colder  part, 

And  like  a  man  in  wrath  the  heart 
Stood  up  and  answer’d,  ‘  I  have  felt !  ’  ” 

— In  Memoi'iam ,  cxxiv. 

f  This  is  the  difference  between  the  orthodox  formula 
(, bjxoovaios )  and  the  semi-Arian  ( 5/xoiovcrios )  ;  the  decided 
Arian  affirmed  erepoov<rios.  Of  course,  the  whole  doctrine  of 
the  Trinity  in  Unity  and  of  the  proper  Deity  of  Christ  re¬ 
sides  in  the  iota. 


the  Westminster  Standards  29 

only  so  long  as,  we  have  not  vitally  experienced 
the  spiritual  truths  which  underlie  them,  to  which 
they  give  just  expression  and  for  which  they  form 
the  bulwarks.  “  Nothing  could  be  more  mis¬ 
taken,”  says  Professor  Sabatier  in  one  of  his 
lapses  into  sound  reason,*  “  than  to  represent  the 
fathers  of  the  councils  or  the  members  of  the 
synods  as  theorists,  or  even  as  professional  theo¬ 
logians,  brought  together  in  conference  by  specu¬ 
lative  zeal  alone  in  order  to  resolve  metaphysical 
enigmas.  They  were  men  of  action,  not  of  spec¬ 
ulation  ;  courageous  priests  and  pastors  who 
thought  of  their  work  as  like  that  of  soldiers  in 
open  battle,  and  who  were  ready  to  die  as  one 
dies  for  his  country.”  The  creeds  have  been 
given  to  the  Church,  not  by  philosophers  but  by 
the  shepherds  of  the  flocks,  who  loved  the  sheep ; 
not  in  a  speculative  but  in  a  practical  interest ; 
not  to  advance  or  safeguard  what  we  may  speak  of 
as  merely  intellectual,  but  distinctively  spiritual 
needs :  and  to  every  seeing  eye — that  is,  to  every 
eye  open  to  spiritual  vision — they  bear  their  cor¬ 
responding  appearance. 

Of  no  creed  is  all  this  more  true  than  of  the 
Westminster  Standards.  Perhaps  I  may  even 
venture  to  say,  of  no  creed  is  it  true  in  an  equal 
measure  as  of  the  Westminster  Standards.  Men 
*  Discours  sur  V  evolution  des  dogmes ,  pp.  33,  24 


30  The  Significance  of 

of  learning  they  were,  no  doubt,  who  framed  these 
standards  ;  men  of  speculative  power  and  philo¬ 
sophical  grasp ;  men  who  were  the  heirs  of  all  the 
Christian  ages,  and  who  had  consciously  entered 
into  their  inheritance ;  in  whose  minds  were 
stored  the  well-ordered  fruits  of  serious  study  of 
the  whole  product  of  Christian  thought  and  liv¬ 
ing  up  to  their  time.*  But  their  chief  claim  to 
greatness  does  not  lie  in  this.  “  Some  of  the 
Assembly,”  is  the  testimony  of  one  who,  though 
not  in  sympathy  with  them,  strives  hard  to  do 
them  justice  — u  some  of  the  Assembly  were 
great  men  ;  most  of  them  were  sincerely  good.”  f 
They  were  above  and  before  all  else — and  that  too 
consciously  to  themselves — men  of  God,  men  of 
strenuous  and  devout  lives,  who  had  known  what 
it  was  to  suffer  for  Christ’s  sake,  and  who  spared 
not  themselves  in  the  work  of  His  vineyard. 
They  were,  in  one  word,  just  a  picked  body  of 

*  “  It  was  an  age  of  great  religious  knowledge,  and  now 
for  thirty  years  of  free  and  violent  discussion.” — Marsden  : 
History  of  the  Later  Puritans ,  p.  53.  “  The  Presbyterian  party 
[in  the  Assembly,  i.e. ,  the  great  majority]  were  not  ordinary 
men,  nor  men  of  fickle  minds.  .  .  .  Most  of  them  left 

to  the  world  some  records  of  ministerial  ability,  of  solid  learn¬ 
ing,  and  of  zeal  and  piety,  which  time  has  not  destroyed.” — 
Ibid.,  p.  64.  On  the  knowledge  and  power  displayed  by  the 
Westminster  Divines  in  the  work  of  preaching,  see  p.  88. 

f  Marsden  :  Histoi'y  of  the  Later  Puritans,  p.  106. 


the  Westminster  Standards  31 

Puritan  pastors  —  “  the  flower  of  the  Puritan 
clergy,”  as  the  secular  historian  calls  them  * — the 
best  men  of  the  best  age  of  British  Protestantism. 
And  they  were  met  together  not  to  air  their  con¬ 
ceits,  but  to  save  the  good  ship  of  the  Church  of 
England  alike  from  the  rocks  of  sacerdotalism 
and  the  shoals  of  humanitarianism  on  one  or  the 
other  of  which  it  seemed  likely  to  founder  ;  and 
above  all,  to  speak  out  heartily  and  without  cir- 
circumlocution,  all  the  words  of  the  Divine  life. 
It  results,  therefore,  from  the  very  nature  of  the 
case  that  it  is  above  everything  else  a  religious 
document  which  they  have  given  us — a  docu¬ 
ment  phrased  in  theological  language,  no  doubt, 
as  all  religious  instruments  must  be,  for  such  is 
the  language  of  religion  when  seeking  to  express 
itself  in  terms  of  thought  —  but  a  document 
which,  in  the  highest  and  most  distinctive  sense 
of  those  words,  is  a  religious  document ;  a  docu¬ 
ment  transfused  with  the  very  spirit  of  the  age 
of  religious  revival  which  gave  it  birth,  and  bear¬ 
ing  to  every  age  which  will  receive  it  the  spirit 
of  devotion  enshrined  in  its  bosom.  Speaking  of 
the  Puritans  of  London,  one  of  the  soberest  of 
historians  is  forced  to  give  utterance  to  the  ad- 

*  S.  R.  Gardiner  :  History  of  the  Great  Civil  War ,  I.,  272. 
“  It  [the  Assembly  of  Divines]  comprised  the  flower  of  the 
Puritan  clergy.” 


32  The  Significance  of 

miring  cry  that  “  aiming  to  be  a  saint,  each  man 
unconsciously  became  a  hero.”  *  The  description 
may  be  applied  in  an  eminent  sense  to  the  divines 
of  the  Westminster  Assembly.  If  they  have 
become  intellectual  heroes  to  us,  as  we  wonder 
over  the  solidity  and  circumspection  of  their  the¬ 
ological  structure,  it  is  not  because  their  prime 
aim  was  scholastic.  They  wrote  these  definitions 
aiming  before  all  things  to  be  saints:  is  it  strange 
that  we  see  the  saint  through  the  theologian  and 
have  our  hearts  warmed  by  the  contact  ?  Certain 
it  is  that  the  Westminster  Standards  have  a  spir¬ 
itual  significance  to  us  which  falls  in  no  wise 
short  of  their  historical  and  scientific  significance. 

Open  these  standards  where  you  will  and  you 
will  not  fail  to  feel  the  throb  of  an  elevated  and 
noble  spiritual  life  pulsing  through  them.  They 
are  not  merely  a  notably  exact  scientific  statement 
of  the  elements  of  the  gospel :  they  are,  in  the 
strictest  sense  of  the  words,  the  very  embodiment 
of  the  gospel.  They  not  only  know  what  God 
is  ;  they  know  God  :  and  they  make  their  readers 
know  Him— know  Him  in  His  infinite  majesty, 
in  His  exalted  dominion,  in  His  unlimited  sov¬ 
ereignty,  in  the  immutability  of  His  purpose  and 
His  almighty  power  and  universal  providence,  but 
know  Him  also  in  that  strangest,  most  incompre- 
*  Marsden  :  History  of  the  Later  Puritans ,  p.  111. 


the  Westminster  Standards  33 

liensible  of  all  His  perfections,  the  unfatliomable- 
ness  of  His  love.  Their  description  of  Him  tran¬ 
scends  the  just  limits  of  mere  definition  and  swells 
into  a  psean  of  praise— praise  to  Him  who  is 
“  most  loving,  gracious,  merciful,  long-suffering, 
abundant  in  goodness  and  truth,  forgiving  in¬ 
iquity,  transgression  and  sin,  the  rewarder  of  them 
that  diligently  seek  Him.”  And  how  profound 
their  knowledge  is  of  the  heart  of  man — its  prone¬ 
ness  to  evil,  its  natural  aversion  to  spiritual  good, 
its  slowness  of  response  to  spiritual  influence,  the 
deviousness  of  its  path  even  under  the  leading  of 
the  Holy  Ghost.  But,  above  all,  they  know,  with 
a  fulness  of  apprehension  which  startles  and  in¬ 
structs  and  blesses  the  reader,  the  ways  of  God 
with  the  errant  souls  of  men — how  He  has  con¬ 
descended  to  open  the  way  to  them  of  having 
fruition  of  Him  as  their  blessedness  and  reward, 
how  He  has  redeemed  them  unto  Himself  in  the 
blood  of  His  Son,  and  how  He  deals  with  them, 
as  only  a  loving  Father  may,  in  disciplining  and 
fitting  them  for  the  heavenly  glory.  Where 
elsewhere  may  we  find  more  vitally  set  forth  the 
whole  circle  of  experience  in  the  Christian  life — 
what  conversion  is  and  how  God  operates  in  bring¬ 
ing  the  soul  to  knowledge  of  Him  and  faith  in  its 
Saviour,  what  are  the  joys  of  justifying  grace  and 
of  adoption  into  the  family  of  God,  and  what  the 


34  The  Significance  of 

horrors  of  those  temporary  lapses  that  lie  in  wait 
for  unwary  steps,  and  what  the  inconceivable 
tenderness  of  God’s  gracious  dealings  with  the 
stumbling  and  trembling  spirit  until  He  brings  it 
safely  home  ?  Who  can  read  those  searching 
chapters  on  Perseverance  and  Assurance  without 
feeling  his  soul  burn  within  him,  or  without  ex¬ 
perience  of  a  new  influx  of  courage  ^and  patience 
for  the  conflicts  of  life  ?  It  is  not  a  singular 
experience  which  Dr.  Thornwell  records,  when  he 
sets  down  in  his  journal  his  thanksgiving  to  God 
for  this  blessed  Confession.  “I  bless  God,”  he 
writes,  “  for  that  glorious  summary  of  Christian 
doctrine  contained  in  our  noble  Standards.  It  has 
cheered  my  soul  in  many  a  dark  hour,  and  sus¬ 
tained  me  in  many  a  desponding  moment.”  We 
do  not  so  much  require  as  delight,  with  consen¬ 
tient  mind,  in  his  testimony,  when  he  declares 
that  he  knows  of  a  no  uninspired  production  in 
any  language,  or  of  any  denomination,  that  for 
richness  of  matter,  soundness  of  doctrine,  scrip¬ 
tural  expression  and  edifying  tendency  can  for  a 
moment  enter  into  competition  with  the  West¬ 
minster  Confession  and  Catechisms.”  *  The  West¬ 
minster  Standards,  in  a  word,  are  notable  monu¬ 
ments  of  the  religious  life  as  well  as  of  theological 

*  B.  M.  Palmer :  The  Life  and  Letters  of  James  Henley 
ThomweU,  D.D. ,  LL.D pp.  162  and  165. 


the  Westminster  Standards  35 

definition,  and,  speaking  from  the  point  of  view  of 
vital  religion,  this  is  their  significance  as  a  creed. 


I  have  sought,  fathers  and  brothers,  nothing 
more  than  to  indicate,  with  a  brevity  suitable  to 
the  nature  of  the  occasion,  what  may  be  thought 
to  be  the  chief  sources  of  the  significance  of  the 
Westminster  Standards  as  a  creed — to  suggest  in 
broad  outline  why,  after  two  centuries  and  a  half, 
they  are  still  enshrined  in  the  affections  of  the 
churches  which  have  been  blessed  by  their  posses¬ 
sion,  and  why  we  feel  impelled  to  gather  here  to-day 
to  express  before  the  world  our  sense  of  benefits 
received  from  them  and  of  satisfaction  in  them. 
It  would  be  easy  to  enlarge  upon  the  theme.  It 
would  be  easy  to  show,  for  example,  how  freely 
the  best  thought  of  the  best  age  of  Protestantism 
was  poured  into  them;  how  fully  and  genially 
they  represent  the  consensus  of  Reformed  doc¬ 
trine  in  its  most  developed  and  most  catholic 
form ;  how  strictly  they  are  held  in  every  defini¬ 
tion  to  the  purity  of  the  Biblical  conceptions  and 
enunciations  of  truth.  These  and  similar  grounds 
of  appeal  to  our  admiration  and  acceptance  may 
be  considered,  however,  to  be  implicitly  included 
in  what  has  been  broadly  adduced,  and  we  may 
agree  that  the  hold  of  the  Westminster  Standards 


36  The  Westminster  Standards 

upon  our  hearts  and  suffrages  is  due  proximately 
to  the  facts  that  we  see  in  them,  historically 
speaking,  the  final  crystallization  of  the  very  es¬ 
sence  of  evangelical  religion — scientifically  speak¬ 
ing,  the  richest  and  most  precise  and  best  guarded 
statement  possessed  by  man,  of  all  that  enters 
into  evangelical  religion  and  of  all  that  must  be 
safeguarded  if  evangelical  religion  is  to  persist 
in  the  world — religiously  speaking,  the  very  ex¬ 
pressed  essence  of  vital  religion.  Surely  blessed 
are  the  churches  which  feed  upon  this  meat! 
Surely  the  very  possession  of  Standards  like  these 
differentiates  the  fortunate  churches  which  have 
inherited  them  as  those  best  furnished  for  the 
word  and  work  of  the  Christian  proclamation  and 
the  Christian  life.  May  God  Almighty  infuse 
their  strength  into  our  bones  and  their  beauty 
into  our  flesh,  and  enable  us  to  justify  our  inherit¬ 
ance  by  unfolding  into  life,  in  all  its  complete¬ 
ness  and  richness  and  divinity,  the  precious  gospel 
which  they  have  enfolded  for  us  in  their  protect¬ 
ing  envelope  of  sound  words! 


